Friday, February 19, 2016

Orton Gillingham Method

We ended our A week with the Orton Gillingham Foam finger memory tracing. Orton Gillingham believes that in order to train the brain to remember sounds and names of letters you must add movement in repetitive motions while chanting like we did, "apple, Aaaaaaah" while making the letter A in the foam. You can also do this while tracing in the air with your finger or using a marker on whiteboard or chalk on blackboard.

I used a strawberry foam that came in Gage's shaving toy kit, and a metal tray that would show up nicely once the shaving cream was traced in.

I am by no means a expert on OG however, my Daughter takes OG lessons once a week for a hour so I watch intently and I can see it working with my own two eyes.

Gage is being tested next weekend for Dyslexia as it can run in families. I figured why not use some of the OG methods to mix things up.

We tried doing this properly true to the OG method but Gage has issues with being wet, sticky or "messy" so we used a thin paint brush instead of his finger. Truth be told he did try with his finger but it truly freaked him out so we got cleaned up and tried again with the paint brush.

At the end I asked him what A says and as pictured he said "Aaaaaah".

I call that a Success!

In review of our A week I have to say it was fun however, this foam memory trace was by far the best at getting him to remember first what A looks like and second what the phonetic sound for A is.